Adults registering for technical college classes on campus they'll share with high school students

Monday

Jun 22, 2009 at 12:01 AM

Carole Hawkins

By fall, high school students will crowd the hallways at the new Golden Isles Career Academy. When they do, they'll find a few hundred adults already taking classes there.

Altamaha Technical College begins its summer semester July 20 at the Career Academy. Classes are also being offered in Kingsland at the College of Coastal Georgia's Camden Center and at McIntosh Academy high school in Darien.

It's the first time the Jesup-based school will train along coastal Georgia, and registrations, which began late in May, have been brisk.

School officials say between 300 and 350 students are expected to take summer classes and by fall they will have 200 to 300 more. It's a big boost for the technical college, which last spring served 1,700 students at campuses in Jesup, Baxley, Hazlehurst and Ludowici.

"The response has been great. People are very much excited," said Rod Lane, an administrator who registered students in Glynn County last week. "Today I heard one woman, after she passed her placement exam, shout, 'Hallelujah! I'm a college student!'"

So far, Lane said, students have shown the most interest in cosmetology, culinary arts, and crime scene investigation.

Also, heating, ventilation and air conditioning has drawn a lot of interest.

"It's not as glitzy as crime scene investigation, I guess. But it pays extremely well," Lane said.

With the economy still churning sluggishly forward, technical training has become as important as ever, Altamaha Tech president Lorrette Hoover said. Enrollment at existing campuses is up 19 percent over last year.

"Our primary purpose is to help people get jobs," Hoover said. "Most people who go here are non-traditional students. They have full- or part-time jobs and families."

The school focuses its training to fit local company demands, which helps graduates to get hired.

Technical certificates take a year or two of classes and the jobs upon graduation pay anywhere from $8 to $24 per hour, according to the college Web site. Placement rates for many of the school's programs are 97 percent.

Altamaha Technical College was just selected in February to take over technical training formerly offered at the College of Coastal Georgia, which is changing from a community college to a four-year program.

The quick hand-over was a daunting task, said Hoover. Continuing existing training, such as health care for local hospitals and industrial arts for refitting Trident submarines, is the school's first priority.

But some new programs are coming as well.

Altamaha Tech's arm's-length list of programs is twice as long as Coastal Georgia College's was. Already this summer students will get to take cosmetology and commercial truck driving. More new classes will follow at the college's coastal locations within the next two years, Hoover said.

"Actually our truck driving students have been coming down [from the Baxley campus] to Brunswick for years to train," said Hoover. "There are a lot of interesting driving scenarios here."

Students may register for Altamaha Tech classes Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the school's Glynn and Camden locations.

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